[MOTHERWELL]

I recently (november) did a clean install of panther on my PB. I have put a lot of programs on there that are pretty big (final cut, dvd studio, other creative apps) and the computer seems to be running slower....

It takes a few minutes to start up and another to get the finder running. I don't have many start up apps going, konfabulator and weather pop being the only 3rd party ones..

Even opening iTunes or system prefs takes a few bouces in the dock - when I first installed the OS everything was lightning fast.


I also have a DP G4 that I have installed very little on - only the bare necessities to do work on. It boots up in about 30 seconds - I know the DP helps this. Even my brothers laptop (same model - AL 1.25) runs faster!

Is there a program to clean out my system?

[Chris O'Brien]

How often do you run the cron jobs? If your computer is turned off every night and started up in the morning, chances are (unless you have changed the settings for cron) that they wont be running, since they default to run at about 5 in the morning.

Open up terminal and type:

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

and then your administrator password, or downlaod macjanitor (or some other app that does the same thing) to do it for you. It's surprising the performance hit you can get from not running the cron jobs as regular as they are designed for....

[SMacTech]

Try running top in terminal or use Activity monitor to see what is using your cpu%.
I have seen WeatherPop go whacked and suck up all remaining cpu time. For that reason, I quit using it.

[MOTHERWELL]

MacJanitor seems to have cleared up the issues. I put my laptop to sleep at night so I was missing all cron jobs. thanks.

[madmacgames]

you can also change the time the cron jobs run. No need to add yet another program to do this for you

in terminal, you can type:
sudo pico /etc/crontab

then put in the admin password and change the time the cron jobs run. It will be the 3 bottom lines and you put in the time as:
minute hour mday(day of month) month wday(day of week with 1 being monday)

* mean every hour etc.

example:
45 23 * * * root periodic daily

this means run the daily script at 11:45PM (23:45) every day of the month, every month of the year, every day of the week.

I've changed all mine to run at times when I know my laptop is likely to be awake.